the.com/money market
Where cash parks for a few weeks and pretends it's still investing.
means A segment of the financial market where short-term, highly liquid debt instruments (like treasury bills, commercial paper, and certificates of deposit) are bought and sold, typically with maturities under a year.
from Straightforward compound of 'money' and 'market' — no hidden story here. 'Money' traces back through Old French 'moneie' to Latin 'moneta,' originally an epithet of Juno, in whose Roman temple coins were minted (hence 'mint' too). 'Market' comes from Latin 'mercatus,' meaning trade or traffic in goods, related to 'merx' (merchandise), the root that also gives us 'merchant' and 'commerce.' The term 'money market' itself emerged as finance needed a name for the marketplace where short-term debt instruments — rather than goods — change hands, sometime as banking and credit systems matured enough to need the distinction from the 'capital market' of longer-term investment.
- maturity
- loans typically mature in under a year
- safety illusion
- low risk, not zero, 2008 proved it
- players
- banks, governments, corporations trading short-term debt
- not stocks
- borrows and lends, never actually owns anything